


Integration

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 2nd Person, Abuse, Angst, M/M, as canon compliant as possible, overly developed senses of smell suck, voyuerism, will probably be jossed oh well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-04
Updated: 2012-08-04
Packaged: 2017-11-11 10:48:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>That Derek isn’t his enemy, either, that everything Derek does (even the things you don’t understand) are for the pack, that the lone wolf dies alone, and you don’t care how much that makes you sound like Ned Stark, because it’s true.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Integration

The party is overwhelming in a way you didn’t think was possible: the smells sear into your nose, they burn there, the sourness of human sweat and the sweetness of liquor and the acid of so many bodies pressed close together. You know why, now, that Derek spends so much of his time in the woods or alone. Crowds are overwhelming, the stink is unbearable. You can smell the sex happening in the bathroom (not to mention hear it), and Erica’s body next to yours, pushing up against you isn’t helping.

You smell him though, like a beacon, and Erica looks up at you with that exasperated expression she only wears when McCall and Stiles decide to pay you both a visit. You think it’s strange, funny, that McCall is so easily fooled. Stiles, you expect it from. Stiles still hears things like a human.

They try and pull you two apart, McCall is trying to _talk sense into you_ , and you wonder what the hell he really wants, because this is fucked up. Doesn’t he understand that Derek is not your enemy? That Derek isn’t his enemy, either, that everything Derek does (even the things you don’t understand) are for the pack, that the lone wolf dies alone, and you don’t care how much that makes you sound like Ned Stark, because it’s true. But you don’t say any of those things, instead you roll your eyes and push him away and try to bury yourself in Erica’s pack scent, in the rightness of it, until a whiff of Derek (of Alpha, of _correctness_ ) pushes against your nose and you’re face to face with Stilinski, your nose in his short hair, huffing like you’re trying to get a hit off him.

Stilinski flails, yells something about personal space, inappropriate touching, his arms pushing you away. He’s so spastic.

You feel a growl coming up in your throat, but you push Erica and McCall away, resisting the urge to impale Stilinski, and you get out of this club.

******

Nothing is simple anymore, and that’s the truth of it. You have two therapists who sit there and talk at you when you could tell them, easily, that you’re happy your dad is dead. Only that’s not what they want to hear and Derek made it clear to you that it’s not what you’re supposed to say. You go twice a week and sit there and they talk at you about grief, and you don’t think about it. You go to school, you keep to yourself, you play lacrosse, you don’t talk about your home life to anyone, even Boyd and Erica, who watch you like a hawk. You don’t go home at night.

Home is a house where every single wall smells like blood, your blood, where the basement is a pit, where your room stinks of fear. You can’t clean enough to get the smell out; Derek says that some smells linger like that for a reason, that the odors stick to the walls as a reminder of danger. You believe it, because there’s no other real explanation for why you break out in a cold, acrid sweat whenever you smell fear, especially when it’s your own. 

So when you leave the club you don’t go home. Instead you go to the subway car. The very faint smell of urine and hobo still lingers, but only to you. The rest of the pack doesn’t notice, or if they do they don’t say anything, so you just clear out a patch, you get pillows that you steal from Linens and Things and clothes and you make a nest in the back corner and you sleep there. It feels safe. It smells safe.

*****

This den thing should concern you but it doesn’t. Your growing dependency on Derek should concern you, but it doesn’t. 

******

The next day at school Stilinski is babbling something or another about _god only knows what_ , and you don’t care, because he smells too much like _pack_ and it’s making you jittery. How McCall doesn’t smell it is beyond you, but then McCall treats his nose like a lump on his face. You don’t understand that, because ever since you took the bite every smell has been rapturously acute, everything has been clear as a fucking bell as long as it came through your nose. Smells don’t lie. The locker room smells like sweat and soap the old boiled leather of lacrosse equipment in a way that never seemed revelatory before but now you can smell everyone’s business on everything. Danny’s fucking a new guy, you can tell because the smell of semen, very faint, on his backpack isn’t like it was before. Things you never knew but now you smirk about. You know which girls think you’re cute, which guys hate you, who is afraid of Erica (almost everyone) and who isn’t (you and Boyd and _Lydia Martin_ ).

That would be Stilinski who smells too much like pack, and who is babbling even more now about comic books. He says something suddenly a little louder and you realize he’s addressing _you_. You blow him off. 

You don’t get it. You don’t get him, really. Once upon a time, you did. Once upon a time he made sense and so did the rest of the school, but now most of them are beneath you, you think, or at least not worth your attention. But McCall and Stilinski, they don’t make sense to you. They are so against the natural order of things that you don’t even notice when you slam into Boyd. He wants to know where you’re going: _nowhere_ is the answer that comes to mind, and you drop it on him. He just looks at you, and you rub your nose. It stinks in here.

*****

It’s late when you wake up sweating fear into your nest. There’s no one around – Erica and Boyd still have families, they have homes and beds, and you think first when the nightmares shocks your heart that you should go to one of them, first. Erica would let you sleep in her bed, it’s comfortable to sleep with pack, you know it and so does she. Boyd wouldn’t complain either, he’s warmer, bigger, you’ve done it before, but Boyd’s mom tends to wake him up in the morning and you don’t need the heart attack of hiding in the closet because if she catches you it’ll fuck everything up. 

The fear pounds into your chest, it makes it so you can’t move-

_Worthless-_

A breath, another, why can’t you breathe, you don’t know you can’t tell you need oxygen and-

_You’re so worthless, and stay in there until I come get you-_

And the sound of the box closing rips into your gut and freezes the innards, the smell of the box still strong and fresh in your mind and worse now because your werewolf senses are the new filter and it’s magnified, the memory, the stink of metal and fear and blood and skin ripping and you can’t get it out of your nose. Why can’t you breathe? You press your face into a pillow but the darkness triggers something and suddenly you’re holding nothing but fluff in claws and you’re running and howling and then you’re in Derek’s den and his eyes are bright red, anchoring you to the world. He asks you what happened, he sounds worried, but you don’t say anything. Instead you get on your knees in front of him and he pulls you up into his bed and you curl there, surrounded by his smell (Alpha, right, correct, fresh, confident) and you calm down enough until you fall asleep there, his arm across your waist like a bar, skin to skin.

*****

You wake up ashamed but Derek doesn’t seem to notice. He’s passed out next to you, still holding onto you, curled around you. This is how people should sleep, you think, wrapped around each other for comfort, but you slip away. You can’t make him breakfast (only because there’s no kitchen) so you go out and get a few Egg McMuffins from McDonalds and you leave them for him. He’s waking up, his nose the first part of him to huff out from under the comforter, and you almost laugh at the sight of it. It would be cute except that he’s the man that connects you to the world so it’s almost disrespectful to think of him as cute.

You have a lot of issues with the concept of respect. Your father beat it into you, and during the daylight hours it burns you up inside to think about it, your brain reroutes the circuits so that you don’t remember what he did when he didn’t feel respected. You want to respect Derek because he earns it, and so you do things like this, you drop off food when you think he hasn’t eaten or you clean out his den of trash or you just listen to him talk if he needs to talk (which isn’t often). You feel like the den mother because Erica is too caught up in a body that doesn’t feel like a prison and Boyd is joyously celebrating social interactions and you’re the one left picking up the pieces of life that fall around. 

You don’t sit around and watch Derek eat the food you brought him. Instead you lift a shirt without looking at it and leave.

*****

You tuck that shirt away in a plastic bag to keep the smell of Alpha fresh and don’t think about it. You go to school, you go to training, you sit during the full moon in Derek’s torture emporium and think about _Saw_ and _Hostel_ when Erica comes out in the crown of screws with her lips pressed together. You remember the first time you saw her in that thing, how scary it was, but now it’s just a necessary evil. You can’t control your shifts, not as well as Derek can, but you don’t lose yourself anymore, you remember, you remember-

_You remember before your father seemed to lose his mind, before your brother left. You remember baseball, because even though you never really liked watching it you loved playing catch, and your dad would throw you the ball and never get tired. You remembered a rough but loving hand on your head, roughing it up a little and handing you a cone of mint-chocolate chip. You remember Goodnight Moon, that’s a fucking old memory because no one’s read to you in years. You remember getting a battered copy of Harry Potter and you remember being tossed into the air so you could see what it was like to fly. You remember his hand over yours and a world where daddy was right there, nothing could possibly hurt you, nothing would hurt you, not ever._

The memory stabs into your heart, weighs it down, pushes away the wolf that batters, that wants to scream at the moon as if the moon is the cause of every single one of its problems. The memory keeps you whole, and you sit there next to Derek who is looking tired and worn and less like he wants to be there, and that scares you too.

Not because he might not want to be here, that’s legitimate, you don’t want to be here either, stuck in this train watching Erica fight her own beast, watching it ripple under Boyd’s skin. It scares you because he’s your Alpha, you want him next to you all the time.

*****  
One day you remember the shirt, wrapped in plastic at the bottom of your bag, and you add it to the nest until the smell prickles you in your sleep. There’s something wrong with it, something not quite right. The scent is off, Alpha-infused-with-something-else. You tuck it back in your bag and forget about it.

*****

You really should admit it. To yourself, you guess, that would be good. You want to lay your heart next to Derek’s and you want to submit to him and you want to roll over and do what he wants. It’s kind of fucked up, you know that too. You’re not gay, you never had any desire for a man. You think Erica is fucking hot. You’d love to chase that tail, and sometimes she lets you.

She’s a wild one.

She’s been trapped for so long that she pushes all the boundaries. She drives too fast when she gets to drive, she runs too fast, she dances too hard. The smell of her sweat drives you crazy. She pushes you to an edge you didn’t know existed. You want to drink her in, but it’s not emotional, it’s not deep. Erica helps you push aside the hard, dark feelings, she helps you keep up the façade of normalcy that’s gotten you past the last few months. But it’s not Erica who, when you wake up covered in a sick, slick sweat that you run to, it’s not her den you invade, it’s Derek’s.

It’s Derek’s den you almost come into one night, but something stops you, a smell that’s familiar and pack but isn’t human, and babbling, so when you step lightly you see him. The silhouette beneath the Alpha is familiar and unmistakable even if Stilinski wasn’t moaning like a whore, begging Derek to _go harder_ , even if the smell wasn’t inscribing itself into your brain. 

You’ve been shot before but being shot was nothing like this. The shock of being shot is surprising, sure, but it’s not like the world is coming apart, there isn’t a feeling of tearing. Stilinski’s moans and Derek’s grunting and the smell of sex and sweat and lust are picking seams apart, rerouting parts of your brain. Your wolf wants to howl out, and you know that you should admit it now, now now now, before this party in your head turns into a bloodbath, before you go out and kill someone just for good measure. 

You manage not to. You don’t run because it would make noise. Derek is still your Alpha, and respect is still partly fear. You only run once you get back to the train, and you hate that you’re hard, that you have to beat one out.

****

After that you start to notice. Little motions, touches, soft and quiet. How Derek hovers if Stiles is around. How his eyes focus more sharply on him. How Stiles’ wit softens, the tip blunting. They have a vocabulary no one else sees, and you can’t fault them for it because you didn’t see it until now. They have an entire world they’ve built for themselves, this pack of two and the jealousy is so blinding that you don’t know how you can see anything else. It’s so subtle that you wonder if they even know, if they notice that Derek’s roughness has taken on a deadly sharp edge of _erotic_ , that Stiles can’t help but provoke him into touch.

You notice and you don’t say anything. You can’t say anything because Derek is your _Alpha_ and that means something to you, it has to. You need the structure, you need that hierarchy, that’s why you chose life instead of option b, which was always option a, which was something you can’t think about because it reminds you of the locked box in the basement and the knife that you thought you might be able to smuggle in with you if your father didn’t pay attention for one minute or two.

You wonder if you’re the only one who knows this secret. You’re the only one who uses Derek’s body as a shield against the night terrors: Erica and Boyd don’t have this problem, they don’t need the reassurance, the mountain of strength to lean on. They don’t go to his den at night, and you don’t as much anymore, running to daddy when the storm gets bad.

You used to do that, when you were little, when your brother would tell you stories about monsters in your closet. You would run to daddy, and he would hold you, but there’s no more brother and no more daddy and you are the monster.

*****

They come in the winter with the cold, and the entire pack in on edge. You don’t mind the patrols, it’s not like you need the extra sleep, and the invaders (omegas trying to form a pack, not even an Alpha, none of them deserve to be called betas) mostly try and play psychological games. You have to admit that they’re freaking Erica out, one of them spiked a drink with some kind of wolfsbane laced with something and it sent her into a seizure. How they knew, you don’t know and you want to, but the idiots are at it again, playing hero when they should just be letting Derek call the shots. You know he wouldn’t look half as incompetent as he does sometimes if they would just stop fucking up.

It takes almost three weeks for McCall to understand what _under attack_ means, because his brain is, in your opinion, the size of a walnut. But it’s still surprising to come across them, the two of them, Scooby Doo and Shaggy, even though at this point nothing those idiots do should be surprising. Stilinski reeks of Derek, of Alpha, and you kind of wish you could put your fist through his face. You’re telling them to get lost when the omegas attack.

This is the first honest-to-god battle and the bloodlust is too high for you to focus, but at some point there’s a squeal like a dog yelping, crying, and the noise is so familiar-

(you made it, you know you have made that noise, trapped in that box, you recognize all the sounds of distress that come out of a human mouth because they have all been reflected back at you)

-that the next think you know you’re defending Stilinski who is trying to scrabble up a tree, he has a bite on him that smells rank, you can tell it will be infected and it’s only been five minutes, and the omega is clawing at your stomach. You don’t know where McCall went, because now it’s you and the omega and you’re the only thing between Stilinski getting used for omega chow. Wolves may not be able to climb trees but werewolves can.

You howl in fury, in desperation, in hopes that the cavalry hears you but the sound doesn’t cow the omega like Derek’s howls cow you when he’s in a rage. The smell of fear is rank, you can feel the blood getting on your shoes, and the wolf finally stops battering because the wolf is _free_ and the omega is screaming in a way that no human can. He screams and screams and screams until finally the screaming stops with a sick halt, and you’re crowded over Stilinski who is _freaking out_. 

You tell him to shut up, the omega isn’t dead, but he doesn’t stop, and then there is something frightening because Derek is there and he’s looming over them and Stiles doesn’t stop, and when the omega opens his eyes Derek turns to look at him.

What comes next is beyond even what you would like to admit is in the realm of what is normal around here. Derek rips the omega apart. You always thought the words _limb from limb_ was just some kind of saying.

It isn’t. 

Stiles vomits into the grass and the smell makes you curl your nose up in disgust, but Derek is pushing you aside and that is worse than watching your Alpha take apart an omega. You feel that spike of shame as Derek picks him up and carries him, as he growls for you to go find the others.

You want to do as you’re told, it’s the instinct you follow best, the mix of respect-fear-reason that your father beat into you, and you just watched Derek _rip a body apart_ , and you should clean up that murder scene but instead you call Boyd and he comes with Erica and you take off as they burn the body, get rid of the evidence.

You hear the yelling clear as crystal from way outside the den. Screaming about how stupid that was, how dumb, how _I can’t protect you and what if Isaac hadn’t been there_? and the sound of wood giving way under angry fists.

Stilinski dishes out just as good as he takes it, yelling back about ripping people apart and body parts and how he had never seen anything like that and how he doesn’t usually throw up and _what the fuck is wrong with you, Derek_ and it makes you bristle. They’re fighting, this is intimate, you should go. This is more intimate than sex and you don’t know why: it’s not until later that you realize you feel that way because your father only fought with you in private where he knew he could hurt you.

But Derek doesn’t hurt Stiles, he just storms out and catches you staring up at the door. His eyes are red, and it takes every bit of human willpower you have to keep the wolf from rolling over and offering neck. He doesn’t comment on the fight he knows you just heard. He snorts, gruff, and makes you follow without a word. You know Stiles is barreling after you, tripping to keep up, but he can’t, he’s only human.

****

It’s a world of two people inhabited by a cast of more, and there’s something voyeuristic about every time they’re together now. The death of the omega seems to have drawn them closer, McCall even spends more time with the pack (he is a member, but he’s the rogue element, the one least likely to come when called) and there’s no direct tension, but you still want to rip out Stilinski’s guts. He’s your Alpha, not his, you took the bite, you asked for it, but Stilinski is still human and it shows. At the same time, though, there’s an overwhelming desire to protect him. You don’t believe in this mate shit: you don’t like the idea is all, because you’ve seen too many people fall apart when they were left or someone died and you’re not going to let that happen here. What you do believe in is keeping Derek happy, it’s an urge you had with your dad, and it makes you uncomfortable to think that your urges for your dad have transferred to Derek because the feelings you have when you slick up your hand with spit and beat one out to the image of him aren’t exactly _fatherly_.

God you’re fucked up.

But you watch this dance more carefully, watch Derek growl and postulate and _protect_ and watch Stiles flail and spaz and do what he can for the entire pack like some god damned den mother and you see past the dancing and to the root of it, two people in a world where everyone is fighting for their attention, two broken people with broken families ignoring the most broken elements in it. 

The pack is a floating Island of fucking Misfit Toys.

*****

The last of the omegas finds you alone, in your den. You would say there goes that plan, except that you’re not coherent enough when they drag you away, when they drag you to a place and you see it. You fight. Of course you fight, but there are two of them and they’ve drugged you with something, something that cuts the edge that fear gives you in a fair fight. It smells disgusting, like some kind of wolfsbane, and you’re trying to scream but you can’t as they load you into the box and 

_No no no no no_

You’re beating yourself against it, your claws can’t find purchase, though, and it’s like you’re human and weak all over again, curled into yourself in a freezer that’s locked from the outside, only this time no one will find you and you’ll die here and your breathing will suck up all the air and you scream but there’s nothing screaming can do.

The first time was when you were fourteen, and your brother was already gone, and your dad said it was discipline, he couldn’t handle your stupid mistakes and look what you made him do, how dare you not make first string on the lacrosse team, how dare you not be on the swim team, how dare you not be perfect, why would you do this, and he dragged you down into the basement and locked you there for a half an hour-

And then it happened once a week, sometimes twice, and you hate enclosed spaces, you hate them, once he left you for four hours but this is worse than that because _no one knows you’re here_ and you’re weak and stupid. The taste in your mouth is acrid and vile and metallic, it’s blood, you’ve slashed the insides of your mouth into ribbons and they’ve healed and sliced again. You push and push and you don’t know how long you’ve been in the box when the top blows open and you attack the first thing you see.

How dare he, how dare he put you in there, how could he, you’re his _son_ , you’re not an animal how can he treat you like one why would he do this what did you do you only wanted him to like you there wasn’t anything else that you needed from him but love and-  
And-

And Derek is slamming you into the ground, his hand on the back of your neck. Someone is saying your name, Stilinski, you realize, and you come back to now with a slam to the base of your stomach like someone kicked you, only the kick is just the fear settling. You think maybe you’re crying but it doesn’t matter because the heat of shame is making it hard to feel your own face.

Derek holds you there for a few minutes and you can hear Stilinski yelling for him to let you go but you hope he’s ignored. You don’t want Derek to stop holding you down, to make you remember that this box wasn’t the one your father locked you in, that this box wasn’t opened with the hope that what came out would be cowed and dead inside. Derek yells for him to _shut up_ , and finally Derek yells _leave_ , and you think he’s talking to you so you scrabble for purchase but no, Derek just holds you there for another minute. Your heartbeat stills, and you go limp, and finally your Alpha lets you up.

When you sit up Stiles is gone and Derek is watching you, and his eyes are so green even in the dark. You don’t know how he found you, but you’re breathing through your mouth, your legs just spread, and he gets up and tells you-

Tells you-

*****

You stay at his den that night. Derek tells Stilinski to beat it and adds that he’s never to tell him what to do with one of his wolves again, and Stilinski doesn’t snap back so you know it sinks in. You sleep curled around your Alpha and breath his scent and pretend not to notice that Stiles’ smell, sharp and a little spicy, weaves in with Derek’s pungent smoke-and-forest one. 

*****

There are no hard feelings. Derek doesn’t berate you for getting caught. Stiles doesn’t tell anyone what he saw. They are still their world and you are still dancing around each other, and every moment the loneliness catches you unaware you fight to breathe through it. But you leave Stilinski alone.

It’s time you face it, you realize. The house smells like fear, but it’s old, no longer oozing from the walls but instead just sitting there. There’s a layer of dust – less than expected, you were clean when you lived there and everything was closed. It doesn’t smell musty or off. You can barely smell your father anymore.

You spend a little time in your room and you’re soothed by the old things, the way they smell so human. You turn on your computer and poke through it – despite what some people might think your grades haven’t suffered for your lack of it. You spend an hour in your dad’s room, and you manage not to destroy anything.

Finally you go into the basement. It’s eerily quiet, and the box is sort of bent out of shape (thanks, McCall) but it’s still there. Your heart still thumps as you get closer to it, even though there’s no one behind you that can hurt you. It’s an old, bent out of shape freezer. It can’t do anything to you.

The smell of fear and sweat and urine is stronger here than anywhere else in the house. You stare at the box for a long time, you know it can’t really hurt you.

When you told Derek you were doing this, he asked if you wanted help. You wanted to say yes. You wanted to be able to be reassured by him, but know that this is something you have to do yourself. This is your demon, this is your phobia. 

It doesn’t look scary but your heart is beating out of your chest, and you resist the urge to call your Alpha and whimper for him to come get you. Instead you put your fingers in the freezer and begin pulling it up, up out of the basement, up the stairs. It’s easier than you thought it would be to drag it out into the street and you keep tugging. It makes a godawful noise – all the dogs in the neighborhood are going crazy _anyway_ because of you and now people are waking up but you don’t care. You pull the freezer and you feel the weight of fear leave you as you do it. The nights in the box, the things thrown at you, the words thrown at you. Those are memories that will never leave you but the wounds are working into scars now, scars that don’t pull or tug or scar. 

By the time that you tear into it – really tear into it, the metal doing awful things to your claws until the healing kicks in and you tear again – you realize that the memories have lost their poisonous edge. It’s as though you’ve drained them, the toxicity is draining away. 

You will never trust anyone like you trust the pack, and your Alpha, and you know that, and you know why. But it doesn’t matter. Because they’re there, comfortable, secure against you. You know why Peter went crazy when the pack died, suddenly, and you sit in the remnants of a prison you built for yourself, a prison more potent than the one your father locked you in when you were too weak to fight it.

*****

Stiles doesn’t bother you anymore. His smell doesn’t bother you, even though you still think Derek could do better. They are their own world, still, growling and hissing at each other, and you roll your eyes at it with Erica. Of course she knows. Of course everyone knew the whole time. But all you have to do is tell him to shoo and he shoos. It doesn’t bother you to walk in on them – apparently Erica does it _all the time_ , and so does Boyd, and now you do too. Derek doesn’t mind and Stilinski is hilarious when he claims it’s wrong, but Derek just snorts and pushes him aside.

The nightmares don’t come anymore. You stay in your house (and so does Erica, and so does Boyd, all piled on top of you) and you breathe in the smell of pack, fresh clean and right, and you sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed (lol a PUN) so mistakes are entirely my own!


End file.
